The use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) is more and more demanded by civil and military applications, and the integration of such systems into non-segregated airspace is becoming a must. However, nowadays existing UAS are not allowed to operate in non-segregated airspace, as they are not designed in accordance with the demanding airworthiness standards which apply for manned aviation.
Regulations for integration of UAS into the airspace are still in development, but most of them refer to aerospace safety standards like SAE ARP 4761 (Aerospace Recommended Practice—Guidelines and Methods for Conducting the Safety Assessment Process on Civil Airborne Systems and Equipment) or SAE ARP 4754 (Aerospace Recommended Practice—Guidelines for Development of Civil Aircraft and Systems) as applicable airworthiness requirements.
Traditionally the focus on compliance with these standards has been on the airborne part of the system, paying little attention to them in the control station design. As a consequence, the existing control station architectures are not designed to cope with these standards and most of them cannot fulfil the required levels of safety.
Accordingly, some prior art documents are focused on controlling the UAV, and do not include concepts relating to the safety standards for UAS.
US20160070261 A1 discloses an automated flight control system for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), comprising a flight computer for managing functions related to a flight of the UAV, an application processor for managing functions on the UAV not related to flight, a flight data recorder to record data related to a flight of the UAV, an attitude and heading reference system, a global navigation satellite system receiver, a self-separation module for communicating with another aircraft for the purpose of avoiding a collision, and a wireless communications module for communicating with the remote system, wherein the automated flight control system is capable of receiving operational instructions via the wireless communications module from the remote system.
US20160253908 A1 discloses an Unmanned Aerial System configured to receive a request from a user and fulfill that request using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The Unmanned Aerial System selects a distribution center that is within range of the user, and deploys a suitable Unmanned Aerial Vehicle to fulfill the request from that distribution center. The Unmanned Aerial System is configured to provide real-time information about the flight route to the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle during its flight, and the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is configured to dynamically update its mission based on information received from the Unmanned Aerial System.
In addition to the safety aspects, another market demand for UAS is to develop generic control stations that can be used to control different types of UAVs, which provide significant operational benefits as reduced acquisition and maintenance costs or simplified training. Although several interoperability standards are currently available, the existing interoperable control station designs do not take into account compliance with the mentioned safety regulations.